Diamond Smile
by Walkinthegarden
Summary: When Shawn sees the picture of a Jane Doe in a cold case file, his whole world is turned upside down. It seems ghosts from the past are creeping in. And it only gets worse when he realizes that SHE was the first victim of a serial killer.
1. Canceled Lunch

**Title: **Diamond Smile

**Pairing(s):** past Shawn/Juliet, Lassiter/Male OC, past Shawn/Female OC

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: When Shawn sees the picture of a Jane Doe in a cold case file, his whole world is turned upside down. It seems ghosts from the past are creeping in. And it only gets worse when he realizes that she was the first victim of a serial killer.

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**Chapter 1 – Canceled Lunch**

Juliet O'Hara was not an impatient woman, in fact, there was a pile of evidence in defense of the contrary, but everybody is entitled to have a bad day once in a while and this particular day happened to be one of those rarities. After the last case, Chief Vick put them all on temporary desk duty to let their bodies (and minds) heal.

The case had involved the brutal murders of seven high school girls where the killer cut out their tongues and dumped their bodies in front of their parents' house. He was on victim number eight when they found him. Juliet would never forget the look in that poor girl's eyes. She'd already been raped and tortured and her tongue had already been cut. Even after the murderer had been caught and killed, the teenager had refused to leave the corner she'd been crouching in. She'd cried and cried and her eyes had just been so afraid and panicked that no one knew what to do (she had no parents). Eventually it was Shawn that got her to trust him. He used a tactic they never would have thought of. He simply sat down next to her and started talking, everything from his childhood to his desperation to find her alive (as it no longer applied, the unscathed part went unsaid). She'd responded, clutching his hand and not letting go all through her time at the hospital.

Both Juliet and her partner had been injured while working the case, Juliet taking a shot to the shoulder and Lassiter getting into a nasty fight with the killer before killing him.

So to make a long story short, the SBPD was stuck helping other departments in California by looking though Cold Case files. As much as she despised it, it was better then pure paperwork.

Most of them seemed impossible to solve, so Juliet placed them in stacks on Lassiter's desk to await his review. He would be the one to pick which ones he deemed worthy of their oh so valuable time.

She had just picked up a new file when Shawn made his presence known.

"Juliet!" he called obnoxiously as he jumped up onto her desk, disrupting her neat stacks.

"Shawn…" she muttered in exasperation. She wasn't in the mood to deal with him right now.

"Look Jules, we never go anywhere any more. Let's do lunch, there is this awesome place in town called the P-Smoothie, now don't let the name fool you, there is no pee in the smoothie because that would be weird."

"Fine," she sighed, agreeing because she knew it'd be the easiest way to get him to leave as fast as possible. "Just let me go to the lady's room."

"Ok," he agreed cheerfully as he jumped from her desk to her chair.

She swears she was only gone for three minutes, but something must have happened in those three minutes because when she came back, Shawn was as white as a ghost, staring unblinkingly at the picture in her cold case file.

"Shawn?" she asked hesitantly.

"I've got to go… rain check."

He spoke the words, but she had a feeling he didn't know who or what he was talking about. He looked so visibly shaken as he turned and all but ran for the door.

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**A/n This was written as a companion to my story _The One That Got Away_, but is not needed for this fic. Hope you like it!**


	2. Concern

**Chapter 2 – Concern**

She got a phone call from Gus a few days later. He told her Shawn was investigating the death of some Jane Doe and was driving himself to near insanity, rarely eating, not sleeping, and yelling at everyone that dared go near him.

She drove to the psych office to find it in complete disarray. Henry and Gus were sitting outside, playing chess on a bench. They greeted her when she arrived but they didn't warn her about the mess. There were empty take out containers spilling over onto the floor and books with similar titles thrown across the floor haphazardly or open with highlighted words or phrases. There was a board in the center of the room with numbers and words she couldn't make out. Shawn was at his desk scribbling something in a notebook.

"Shawn?" she asked cautiously. She stepped over a book pile to inch closer.

"It's here, the answer is here," he muttered, ignoring her presence.

"Shawn…"

He stopped, looking up to face her. He looked horrible with dark bags under his eyes and he hadn't shaved in a few days, but he looked surprised, like he hadn't heard her come in. "Juliet."

"You okay Shawn?" she asked. "Your father and Gus are worried about you."

"Well they can leave me alone! Tell them I don't need them! I have to find out who killed her, I have too! She was me, she was who I was! I have to know," he yelled angrily, hitting a stack of books from his desk.

"Whoa Shawn, slow down, who are you talking about? Let me help you…" she trailed off when she spotted a picture of one of her Jane Does taped to the board. "You know her name."

He sighed, tears filling his eyes as he fell into his chair.

"I know enough about her to write a book," he stated fondly, "her name was Carrie…"

_Eight Years Ago_

"Hello, what are you doing in this part of town?" Shawn asked with a smile as he approached the fiery auburn head at the bar.

She turned her head to face him, a dark smirk spreading across her face. Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she looked him over. She stood out in the small cowboy bar. Her clothes consisted of black leather pants that gleamed in the decorative barn lights and a matching biker's jacket; her hair messy and tangled, a sure sign that it'd been in a helmet within the past few hours.

"Just passing through," she said with a seductive grin, cocking her head to the side. Her voice was soft and a little horse with a slight hint of a southern accent. "What about you?"

"Just passing trough," he mimicked, taking the seat next to her. He flashed her his best smile, "I'm Shawn, what's your name?"

"Carrie," she replied, motioning for the bar tender to get her another shot.

"So where you headed… Carrie?"

"No where. I'm a drifter, no home or place to call my own. What about you?" she asked.

"Never put a name to it but I guess drifter would be pretty accurate." They fell into silence, Carrie tapping her shot glass on the bar and Shawn occasionally sipping a beer. The silence was comfortable, an instant connection formed between them. He knew he could trust her, she was like him. She was searching for something, or maybe running from something.

"Any idea how long you'll stay?" she asked after a few minutes of silence. He shrugged, taking another sip of his beer.

"Never know, could be a few hours to a few months to settling down and living my life out here… but I doubt it. Something to be said of anonymousy."

"You mean anonymity."

"I've heard it both ways," he replied playfully, giving her a tired smile. He didn't have to put up a wall around her, didn't have to defend himself with charm and childish actions, not for her. There was something to be said for anonymity but there was something to be said for drifters. There was something about having no one that made them stick together and let their guards down around one another. Maybe it was because you'd never see them again. Maybe it was because they were the same. Or maybe it was because they had no one to tell. "So what made you leave home?" It was a common question, ones all drifters ask other drifters (if that's what he was, he actually had a home to go to if he so desired).

"My dad. My dad wanted this sweet little girl that would grow up to be a high class criminal lawyer; he had big dreams for me, what he got was a wise ass punk who didn't even stick around for her own graduation," she said with a haunted smile as she drowned another shot. "I wasn't the child he wanted or deserved."

"What about your mom?"

"Left when I was seven. She came into my room one night and put me to bed like any other night. The next day her car was gone and so were her clothes. She left a note, saying she was never supposed to be a wife or mom. She had signed divorce papers with it along with papers that gave up her parental rights to me. I never saw my father cry before or after that day." She drowned another shot. "I went off the deep end after that. I should have just grieved her like she'd died but I didn't. I searched for her for years and never found her. I blamed the parent that stood by me for her sins. I was awful to him growing up and even worse the day I left. Just got a phone call this morning," she drowned a forth shot, "he died yesterday, heart attack. Now I really don't have any family. What about you?"

He told her everything, from his mother to his father to his ability to see details. He told her about getting arrested by his own father and how he couldn't stay for his own graduation because he couldn't bare to see his best friend move on without him.

She laughed, telling him about her best friend in insurance sales who was uptight as a person but a daredevil as a friend. They laughed and drank, sharing stories and comparing war wounds.

That night they went stumbling into his motel room. They were perfect for each other, their bodies fitting so naturally together. They touched each other like long time lovers, somehow already knowing exactly what spots made them squirm.

She was gone the next morning, nothing but a crinkled note with her phone number on it to show she'd ever been there. There were no words, not a name or a message or even hyphens to separate the numbers, just a string of ten digits staring up at him.

_Present_

"Do you still have the note?" Juliet asked, hoping as a detective he did and as a former girlfriend he didn't.

She watched as he reached into his wallet, pulling out the note, yellowed with age and wrinkled from constant holding.

She reached out for it but he held it tightly in his hand. Tears clouded his eyes and he whispered two words she never thought she'd hear him say.

"I can't."

They sounded so foreign spilling from Shawn's lips, to vulnerable and grown up to possibly be coming from his mouth. He looked so old in front of her, lines etched deep in his face and hairs turning gray around his temple. It was like he had aged ten years in front of her.

"It's okay," she assured him, she took her phone from her pocket and took a picture of the number. What good would taking it from him be anyway?

"She's dead Juliet," he whispered, his voice breaking slightly. Suddenly he was crying and she didn't know what to do. He'd known Carrie for a few hours but his reaction more closely resembled the lost of a dear loved one. His shoulders shuck and his sobs grew louder. She didn't know what to do. She felt so out of place, standing in the middle of the Psych office among the textbooks and take out containers.

She didn't understand why he was so upset and his reaction frightened her. Unknowing as to what she should do she turned and left, telling Gus that Shawn needed him before returning to the station.

She tracked down the number and found the phone at a battered women's shelter. She was shocked to find that the woman that had it had found it in a jacket that had had a flash drive in the pocket that she had actually kept.

She thanked the woman for the jacket, the phone, and the flash drive. When she arrived back at the station she plugged the drive into her computer. It had two things on it, a picture of a beautiful woman holding a little girl and a video file. She clicked it.

A young Carrie appeared on the screen, laughing as she twirled in a meadow to music. There was wind whistling around her, lifting her dress and blowing the seeds of the dandelions in her hands. With a beautiful smile Carrie fell onto the bed of grass, her arms out stretched and her eyes closed. Whoever was holding the camera laughed as they came closer, zooming in on Carrie's tranquil face.

"I wish I could stay here forever," Carrie whispered to herself.

"Nothing could make this more perfect," the person with the camera said, female.

"My mom," Carrie said, opening her eyes with a frown replacing her smile. "My mom could make this moment more perfect."

"At least we have each other, even if our moms didn't want us," the girl with the camera said with a smile as she turned the camera onto both of them, laying next to Carrie on the grass.

"You're right about that Anne, we'll always have each other," Carrie said with a smile, kissing her friend's hair.

The screen went black and Juliet remained in her seat. With a sigh she put her head in her hands; this was going to be a long case.

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**A/n So now we know a little more about Carrie and just how much she mirrors Shawn in life. We also know Shawn will do anything it takes to find out who killed her. Poor Shawn, Juliet, and everyone else, they're in for a long ride.**


End file.
